The Long over-due american Roadtrip

On January 17 (2012), about two weeks ago, I decided that it was high time that I got back on the road.  Ever since my time in Europe, I had been itching to get back on the road.  I had told my parents my feelings awhile before, and they just asked that I give them a week’s notice before I go.  So, I picked a day (it happened to be Tuesday, not for any reason, but just because that’s the day that came to my mind).  So, Tuesday it was.  I packed my bag the night before, and on Tuesday morning, it was dreary and raining, in the low 40s.  I had originally planned on bringing a guitar with me, so as to make some money busking, but after walking a few blocks with the guitar, side bag and pack, I decided that it was too much.  As I was walking, a van pulled up and the driver asked, “how far are you planning on going?”  I told him Grove City for starters.  The driver, a local man I knew of but had never met in person, offered to take me all the way there, where I could catch the interstate.  While we were driving, he asked about my trip; where I planned on going, why, etc.  I told him, and I’ll tell you:  While I was in Europe, I decided that I should really see more of the US, it being my home country and all.  Also, I feel like the country just carries with it a vibe that’s great for road travel.  I can’t really explain it, but if you do some traveling yourself, you’ll know exactly what I mean.  Anyway, he dropped me off at a gas station about 100 meters from the on-ramp that I needed.  I noticed a sign that said, “MOTOR VEHICLES ONLY” and was a bit concerned; if a cop saw me standing there, there might be problems.  Regardless, there were no problems to speak of, and in just a few minutes I got a ride from a young man named Josiah.  He had red hair and an orange beard, and worked as a landscaper.  He was heading for Pittsburgh, which suited me just great.  After some discussion, we decided that he would drop me off at a spot in the middle of the city, at a stoplight where I might be able to catch a ride out of the city.  After about 20 minutes of waiting, a man in a suit driving a red car quickly pulled up.   I don’t remember exactly where he said he could take me, but it was somewhere a ways away from downtown, out of the bulk of the city.  The road he mentioned wasn’t on my map, but I figured it would be easy to find the interstate again, it almost always is.  He ended up dropping me off at a “really good spot” which was actually a two-lane merger, where the cars weren’t slowing down at all (thusly not taking any thought to picking me up) and I was decided to get off the interstate and climb up a hill where I had seen some houses.  Maybe they could show me where I could go, or at least help me a bit.  The place turned out to be a private living area for retirees, and I was escorted out by a man in a pickup who worked for the place.  This didn’t bother me one bit, because he took me to an on-ramp where I could get back on I-79 south.  My frantic quest for warmer weather could once again commence.  I waited just 15 minutes or so in the rain, when a very old man in a blue Buick stopped for me.  His name was Al, and he told me about some hitchhiking he had done in his younger days.  He took me to a rest stop maybe 20 miles down the road.  This was good;  at rest stops, although cars don’t pass as frequently, you have a better chance of getting a longer ride.  I waiting for almost 45 minutes in the rain, to no avail, and decided to wait inside for a bit and warm up.  I talked to a trucker with a North Carolina jacket on, thinking he would be heading south.  He said he was going to Kentucky, but could take me as far as Columbus, Ohio.  This wasn’t the direction I wanted to go, so I declined on the offer.  Later, a man asked me how far I was going (I carried a cardboard sign reading “SOUTH“, this saved a lot of questions).  I told him towards warmer weather, and he offered to take me as far as Washington, PA.  Once we were in the car and had been driving for a bit, things started to get a little weird.  He was constantly moving legs, and stroking his crotch (while driving), and started to ask me some very strange, and mostly inappropriate questions.  I won’t write the whole conversation, but here are a few off the questions I had to deflect with very general, in descriptive an :  “So what do you do for sex when you‘re on the road?”  “do you ever jack off when you’re camping? Sex outside is hot.”  “you ever get picked up by any hot girls?  Must be easy with a face like yours.”  “How old are you?  Man, you look young”.   These revolting questions were making my stomach turn, and I was very glad to get out of the car when I did.  I walked across to the next on-ramp, and began the wait again, for my next ride.  Even though the waits aren’t usually too long, I usually find myself praying at each one.  There’s a feeling of desperation one gets when hitchhiking, A yearning, just to get moving again, especially on interstate roads where in the meantime you’re forced to stand and wait, unlike state highways, where you can walk alongside, helping with the knowledge that you’re at least getting somewhere.  A short 15 minutes (or less) later, I got a ride from Chuck, A native West Virginian who took me to Mount Morris, a tiny town on the PA/West Virginia border.  He was a pretty interesting man, and had a lot to say about politics, the legalization of pot, the vacations he recommended (scuba diving in mexico) and, like many of my rides, hitchhiking he had done as a kid.  It was a good talk.  Where he left me, I noticed that there was a peculiar number of very large, white pickup trucks, all belonging to some company, although I didn’t know what it was.  As I was standing, I heard, “Hey! Man!” and turned around to see the employee of a nearby gas station approaching.  I was expecting problems, but was pleasantly surprised.  “I can’t give you a ride or nothing, but here,” he said, handing me a dollar bill and some small change. “I know it ain’t much, but I saw you standing out here…”  I was incredibly thankful.  Especially coming from a young kid like this, I love seeing kindness in people.  It’s not the money that counts (although it certainly helps), but the thought, the act.  After a fairly long wait, a car that I hadn’t noticed stop honked, and the passenger yelled to me.  After all the waiting, I was glad to get a ride.  It was an older lady and her son, who worked in Coalmining, and told me that’s what all those trucks were from.  “Coalmines are definitely where the money’s at” he told me.  Apparently he had signed a 4 year contract that would pay nearly $30 per hour by the end of it.  It was pretty good money, but to my ears, year-long contracts and manual labor weren’t exactly appealing.  Regardless, I love talking to the local variety in any given place.  They dropped me off at a truck stop, where my coal-mining friend was sure I’d find a ride.
I didn’t, but after waiting for a half hour or so, an overweight man on his way home from work picked me up.  By this time it was nearly dark, and I was glad to stay moving.  He told me about how many of his former classmates and friends had moved out of the area in former years, as the place didn’t hold much promise for ambitious youngsters.  He had had several lucrative offers to move elsewhere for work (including one to work in an offshore oil rig near brazil) but because of his overprotective parents, he never moved much.  Being a traveling young soul, these words pained me, I couldn’t bear to stay in one place, especially where one grew up, for so long.  But, I suppose there are countless people who fall into the same trap, just becoming a part of the place and staying.  He left me at a small town in the hills, which a large mall and outlet place beside it.  It was past dark by now, and my thoughts were leaning towards finding a place to sleep in the hills, but there was quite a bit of traffic so I stayed awhile.  Eventually, a kid in his late 20s pulled over.  His name was Daniel, and he was an Arkansas native who had moved to West Virginia first for a job, and then for school as a nurse/teacher.  At first, he told me he could take me thirty miles or so up the road.  After talking for a little while, he said to me: “I tell you what.  I’ll drive straight until it’s 10:00, and then I’ll turn right back around.”  It being just 6:30, this sounded great!  Over 3 and a half hours of nighttime driving would put me quite a bit ahead; I was very enthused.  Daniel was very kind, on the way he let me use his iPad to listen to music, and bought me a Dr. Pepper at a gas station we stopped at.  Expecting to be dropped off at a ramp and sleep roadside, I was pleased when he bought me dinner.  “At least let me get you some McDonald’s or something before I drop you off,” he told me.  It’s really interesting to me when people word it like that, as if I wouldn’t let them do that normally.  It’s a surprisingly common occurrence, though.  After inhaling a big mac, Daniel dropped me off, and I found a nice spot to set up my tent, near a rail bridge, sheltered from the lights of cars.  I was a little concerned; on the radio I had heard all the way down that there was an approaching storm/cold front that would drop temperatures from the current 50 to somewhere in the upper 20s or 30s.  I went to sleep, snuggled up in my mummy bag, glad to take a rest and be alone with my thoughts.   I woke up breathing frigid air, glad that I had chosen to set up my tent to protect against wind.  I had made that mistake once one cold night in Slovenia; I chose not to set up my tent so as not to be seen, and as a result didn’t get a wink of sleep that night, and my feet hurt so bad that I prayed they wouldn’t get frostbite.  When the sun rose, I discovered that all of my stuff was covered in frost.
Anyway, due to my good judgement, that wasn’t the case when I woke up in Marion, Virginia.  It was an old civil war town, having lots of historic signs and markers.  I waited for more than two hours at a sparsely trafficked on-ramp, and after having no success, I decided to walk along the state road, through town.  After walking a good two miles or so, a big black Hummer H3 stopped for me.  Hunter, an amateur historian and engineer, had suspected that I was “walking the trail” (the Appalachian Trail) gave me an interesting lecture on the surrounding area.  It turned out that a tornado had wrecked much of the town a year or two before, and the evidence was still very clear in some places.  Hunter was very nice, and bought me a large cup of coffee when we stopped for gas.  He left me at a Tennessee welcome center some 40 miles down the road.  After using the facilities (that damned coffee isn’t easy on my digestive system) I went outside to see if I could find a ride.  The air was cold, and there were occasional snowflakes drifting by as I walked down the parking lot.  After seeing that there weren’t very many cars, I then focused my attention on the trucks.  I finally caught one after just a few minutes.  He was hesitant at first “My company doesn’t allow me to pick up passengers…I don’t know…”  But after talking, I convinced him to give me a lift.  Marc, a trucker from Montreal whose first language was French, turned out to be a totally cool guy.  He was a musician, and played both the guitar and harp.  He told me that he had made some recordings of himself, the summer before when he “had nothing to do.”  Initially, I was expecting some amateur, poor quality covers, but was surprised to hear his talented version of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” album.  I was impressed.  We talked about music, girls, his job, and traveling.  When he told me he could take me all the way to Atlanta (where I was going) I was very happy.  We would just have to make a stop in Chattanooga so he could drop off some of his cargo.  While he dropped this off, I hid in the back of his cabin so that the company workers wouldn’t see me.  This process took quite a long time, more than an hour, and at around 3:30 we continued on the road.  The weather was very sunny, which lightened up my mood quite a bit, having seen nothing but clouds and rain for the last 730 miles.  He left me at a rest stop in Adairsville, Georgia, about 50 miles north of Atlanta, where my uncle told me he could pick me up.  As I was relaxing in the lounge of a truck stop, A large black man started talking to me.  “You good with numbers?”  He told me that he had found figured out the lottery system, and was willing to teach “I don’t do it for free though, I charge” (of course).  He continued, “I’m just tired of winning…It’s like a curse.”  All this amused the hell out of me.  His intentions were so transparent, but the conviction with which he talked to me just made me smile.  He always spoke in the same sort of way, in a pattern of sorts.  When I told my plans for the future, how I wanted to go to Mexico, he said “no you don’t,” in a way that only black people can.  “I had a cousin that got killed near Mexico….we was eatin at a restaurant, and he stood up to see mexico, he hadn’t seen it before…he just dropped dead.  Stray bullet.  We thought he was playin’….he wasn’t playin. Didn‘t even go in Mexico.”  This didn’t change my mind one bit, but it was still amusing as hell to hear the story.   I left him shortly after to catch up with my Uncle Ron, who was picking me up.  It was good to be in the presence of family again.  He took me several miles to their house, which was in an enclosed property near Waleska, Georgia.  I had a very pleasant stay there, staying for 3 nights/4 days.  During my time there, I enjoyed excellent meals cooked my aunt Jo Anne, practiced my harmonica skills, earned some money helping out my uncle, listened to countless stories of her and his youth (all told by her) and had my first meal at waffle house (I’d never been there before).  But, after 4 days, I was feeling the pull of the road again.  My uncle dropped me off at a pretty decent spot, south of Atlanta, where I figured I would get a ride pretty quick due to all the traffic.  After maybe a half hour or so, a man offered to take me to the next exit over.  I was hesitant at first, because the ride would be so short, but I took it anyway.  He dropped me off at a Pilot rest stop, and after having no luck with truckers, I walked down to the exit.  I waited for nearly an hour until the next ride came, so by that time I was glad for whoever would stop.  David, a Korean, pulled up in a minivan.  He talked on his cell phone in his native tongue for almost the whole time, but when his conversation finally ended, he talked little.  He took me a good 60 or 70 miles down the road though, which I was quite glad for.  He left me at a fairly obscure spot, but I got a ride in only a few minutes of waiting with my thumb out, from a man who’s name I can’t recall, that took me just 20 miles up the road (“Anything helps,” I tell those that give me short rides like this, often apologizing for not being able to take me further).  Where he left me, there was little traffic going down my on-ramp, and I waited for more than an hour with no luck. Suddenly, it began to rain.  Hard.  Although I have a rain jacket and a bag to cover my pack, my jeans and boots (Vietnam-era jungle boots, these things are far from waterproof) got thoroughly drenched.  I sat out some of the rain in a gas station, but the damage had already been done.  As I was drearily walking back to my spot, a man yelled, “where are you going?!” George, a native of the area (Valley, Alabama) took me back to his place for some beers, and watched some of the movie “Bobby Z” with his friends for awhile.  After maybe an hour or two, he and his friends drove me about twenty miles down the road, two exits down, to a truck stop.  Upon entering the truck stop, I was told that I “was welcome to use the facilities, butcha cain’t ask nobody fo’ a ride.”  Although this was a slight detriment, it didn’t matter much, because I could just walk down to the interstate.  There, a man in a pickup truck drove me to Opelika, Alabama, where I decided that I would take state roads from there on out.  Although they’re generally slower, with longer waits/walks and shorter rides, I find that state highways make for a better trip, where you can enjoy nature more, see small towns, and set up a tent off in the woods out of sight with no stress.  After walking for a good 45 minutes or an hour, I got a ride from a late-middle aged couple who seemed to have quite a bit of road experience.  They gave advice on how to get showers and wash, places to eat cheap, sleep, and other useful things of the type.  They also gave me detailed directions on how to get to panama city.  Although the road was more or less straight, there was some navigating to be done in cities like Dothan and Eufala.  They dropped me off at 431 south, the 4-lane US highway that I would take all the way to Panama City.  After walking along the road for a little less than an hour, a small pickup full of lawn equipment passed me, slammed on the brakes, and put it into reverse to get to where I was.  Inside were to black guys, the driver wearing a cowboy hat.  The one said, “you follow?” and I don’t know what that meant, but I hopped into the bed of the truck with the lawn equipment.  This being my first ride in the back of a truck(from hitchhiking, and going 70mph) I was plenty happy.  Then, one of the guys knocked on the back window of the truck.  I turned around to look, and he held out a can of beer.  Score!! As if the day couldn’t get any better.  We made several stops along the way, to several tiny houses with loads of people on front porches, with plenty of beer and other green substances to speak of.  He dropped me off around nightfall at a rest stop along 431.  I walked a good 6 miles or so until deciding that it was time for bed.  The place was covered in a thick fog, and I spent the night in the cover of some pines away from the road.  I woke up quite early, first around 5am.  After deciding that it was safe to wait until after sunrise, I did just that, and listened to my iPod for a bit before packing up camp and hitting the road again.  I walked a good ways before a nice young lady named Christie gave me a ride for a few miles “I just couldn’t stand to see you walking like that…and you looked so clean, almost like you were going to church…” (I was wearing a flannel shirt and jeans).  Anyway, I enjoyed her company.  She dropped me off at a gas station.  One thing that I’d like to not is that that morning, everywhere seemed like it was dead in the middle of nowhere;  the terrain was flat all around, and the fog was so thick there was only about 50 feet or so of visibility.  This was pretty interesting to me, and I got quite a few good pictures, of the thick, exotic-looking southern forests, lone road signs and run-down houses deep in the woods.  The fog cleared after a few hours, and by around 11 I was in Dothan, ALA.  There, a very well dressed family of three (who were on there way to church, as it turned out) stopped, saying that “I didn’t look like I belonged on those streets.”  They were very helpful and empathetic, calling friends in panama city to help me out, and took me almost 30 miles, to a Love’s rest stop where Hwy 431 and I-10 cross paths.  Troy, the husband, bought me a meal, water, and some packaged food at the rest stop, and gave me his contact information in case anything should happen.  Thank God for people like that.  At the rest stop, while I was charging my phone and enjoying my meal, a trucker offered me a ride to Lakeland, Florida and possibly all the way to Tampa.  Tempting though it was, I declined the offer, as it was my plan to go west along the gulf coast, rather than south.  After eating, it was another 3 hours or more before I got another ride.  First walking a good 2 miles along 431, after no success I turned around and walked all the way to the on-ramp to I-10 west.  After an hour of waiting, nothing.  Frustrated, I walked back down 431 for 5 miles or so until a young couple took me all the way to Panama City Beach, where they lived.  I walked along the main road (US Hwy 98 west, at that point) and after 30 minutes or so got a ride from some cool Asians in a big Escalade, decked out with rims, trimming and an enormous sound system.  They were really nice, sort of astonished with my trip, and ended up giving me $30 as I was getting out of the car.  This surprised me, and made me glad to see that humanity is indeed live and kickin’.  My last ride was from a young Guatamalan man in an Alfa Romeo.  He was really nice, and offered me his place to stay near the beach for the night.  I had suspected that he was gay from the start, but accepted the offer anyway;  having a roof and heating, with no wind, trumps setting up a tent in a storm any day.  That night, as we were drinking, I mentioned that it would be my birthday in a short time, 5 days or so from that time.  He said that if I wanted, I was welcome to stay with him until that time.  I declined; 5 days was just too long to sit still, especially with this man.  He dropped me off around 11 the next day on Hwy 98, and through a series of fairly short rides and very cool people, I made my way along the coast, through Destin, Fort Walton Beach, and Pensacola by nightfall.  By the end of the night, on my last ride of the night, I met a very interesting man named Bill, who was very interested in my trip.  He was into metaphysics and astrology, and was generally a good person to have a good conversation with.  One of my favorite things hitchhiking is meeting the people who don’t mess around with bullshit small talk, they just get right into the good conversation.  Anyway, Bill had done quite a bit of traveling in RV’s, and said I was welcome to spend the night in the RV that he didn’t use.  We spent quite a few hours discussing lots of things, eating good soup, and drinking ginger ale.   I really liked Bill, he was a cool guy, and as much as I would have loved to stay and visit with him for awhile longer, the call of the Road was just too much.  I was itching to leave again.  I’m sure I’ll see him somewhere else along the line though, things like that often happen.  That morning, the weather was beautiful, and so were the countryside and small towns I was making my way through.  I did quite a bit of walking that day, more than 10 miles I think, and after several short rides ended up in Grand Bay, ALA, after passing through Foley, Fairhope, and Mobile.  West of Mobile, I had been getting some bad vibes about the place.  The weather had turned cloudy, and the buildings were quite run-down; there were an awful lot of pawn shops, loan centers, and car mechanics with enormous, unchained, and scary dogs.  Not too mention, many more miles of walking, some kids that yelled “hitchhiking doesn’t work!” and a very strange, bad-vibe kind of ride that claimed that hitchhiking would be nearly impossible in Mississippi.  I didn’t believe any of these claims, and I know the law, but regardless, it got to my head.  My last ride of the day came from two red-headed teens, Christian and Elliot, who thankfully picked me up before the rain started.  They were really cool, and Christian ended  up letting me spend the night at his house.  It was nice to hang out with someone my own age again, and it worked out really well, because I got an early start, leaving at the same time as they went to school.  The rides along US Hwy 90 west were slow, again, and after dragging my way across to Pascagoula, I decided that it was time to hit the interstate again and get moving; I was sick of walking so much and going so slowly, especially through that area in that weather.  It wasn’t raining, but the gray sky was sort of putting a downer on things, and I was ready to move.  In Pascagoula, after just 15 short minutes of waiting, I caught a ride from an ex-marine named Dan, who worked in the oil business.  I didn’t agree with much of his opinions, but was quite thankful for the ride; he would take me all the way to New Orleans.  I had heard both good and bad things about the city, but after arriving I decided that it was just too good to pass up.  I was served alcohol at the restaurant I ate lunch at (I usually don’t spend the money on restaurants, but I decided that I wanted some legit Cajun food), and the energy of the place was just excellent.  I met a musician named Kris, and talked to a taxi bike rider named Logan.  Kris had to leave shortly thereafter, but he had one of his friends, Lee, show me around the City.  I was very grateful for his help, but he spoke to me in a sort of condescending way, as if I was a naïve little child, and I wasn’t a fan.  After he left, I made friends with a person named Candy.
Candy was a Louisiana native, born and raised in the Bayou, and had lived in New Orleans for most of his life, both with and without a home.  I struck a deal with Candy:  I would buy the groceries, and he would cook some good Cajun food for me.  As long as the food lasted, I could stay.  This, to me, was an excellent deal.  As well as getting a place to stay for the time being, I would be cooked delicious food, and pay less than I would at any motel or hostel.  I enjoyed my time immensely in New Orleans, the city of musicians, of drunks, crazies, bums, of food, drugs, gambling, and generally, my favorite city in the U.S, maybe anywhere.  The people there were just something else.  So open-minded, so much fun and good, live music everywhere, with the beautiful architecture of the French Quarter and most of the city adding the package.  I spent days just walking, seeing awesome blues bands, meeting people, drinking (literally every night is a party) and just enjoying myself.  But, I was feeling a little holed up in candy’s very small room, and after 5 days and 4 nights, I decided that it was time to leave.  This morning, I left Candy’s at around 10 or 10:30, and headed for the on-ramps to I-10.  After about a mile of walking and a little more than an hour of waiting, I got a ride from a man named Jerry in a gold Ford Explorer that took me just 14 miles or so from Baton Rouge, where I planned to go and see a friend from Greenville.  Also, my clothes desperately need washed, as Candy didn’t have a washer machine, so I‘m planning on getting that done, as well as updating this blog, as I haven‘t had contact with a working computer or internet since Atlanta, and that was too poor to get anything done other than face book (I am an addict).  From where he dropped me off, I got a quick ride from a rowdy family of five, Louisiana locals by how they spoke.  I didn’t get any of their names, but the oldest lady, the driver who happened to be the grandma of the bunch, had to use a screwdriver to open up the trunk of the car, a burgundy Buick.  They took me a ways into the city, to a gas station near the campus (LSU) where my friend Katrina (the one I’m visiting now) attends.  After walking through the afternoon, I’m now sitting peacefully in her apartment, typing this long over-due piece.